The nine-year-old read a prewritten statement criticizing the fast-food chain’s nutritional deficiencies and marketing tactics. She asked, “Mr. Thompson, don’t you want kids to be healthy so they can live a long and happy life?”

The third-grader was in attendance with her mother, Kia Robertson, a health-food blogger who came to the conference with other members of Corporate Accountability International, a human rights advocacy group that’s hoping to stop what they say is the fast-food chain’s predatory marketing to kids.

CEO Don Thompson responded by denying the allegations, saying, “First off, we don’t sell junk food, Hannah,” he said. “My kids also eat McDonald’s. When they were about your size, to my son who is with us today...”

Thompson also added his company doesn’t unjustly market to kids or to schools. “We sell a lot of fruits and veggies and are trying to sell even more,” he said.

In recent years, the company has cleaned up its Happy Meals by decreasing the size of kid’s french fry servings and adding apple slices. And salads have been added as regular options for adults.

But while those moves may be a step in the right direction, critics agree with Hannah’s assertion that the company is covertly marketing to children.

And while she asserts parents do need to set boundaries with their children about nutritional choices, “The ways the food industry now targets kids are so pervasive and the tactics so deceitful that even the most diligent parent cannot prevent their kids from being inundated at the most impressionable stages in their development.”

Lappe cites that the junk-food industry now advertises to young students inside school gyms, buses, textbooks and yearbooks. They’ve since gone digital and added an array of computer games and websites for children.

But what may be most confounding for kids is that the company’s Ronald McDonald House charity often partners with schools for fundraising efforts. Critics say it’s those events that teach children early on to associate the fast-food chain with community service and family health. As CPI’s Sriram Madhusoodanan told NPR, “That’s exactly how they build brand loyalty.”

Hannah Robertson isn’t buying it. She not only confronted Don Thompson, but she also regularly makes Youtube videos with her mother for their site, Today I Ate a Rainbow, which promotes healthy eating and home cooking for children and their parents.

And at just nine years old, she joins the ranks of other outspoken children who are making public demands for quality and honesty from the companies and institutions providing them with care.